The present invention relates to, for example, an image pickup method for electronic components to be mounted on a printed circuit board, a component image pickup apparatus that carries out the image pickup method, and a component mounting apparatus with the component image pickup apparatus.
Improving reliability on a working process and shortening a cycle time are greatly required in order to improve productivity in a mounting process for electronic components in these years. Conventionally, in a mounting apparatus for mounting electronic components such as chip components and IC components onto a circuit board, a suction posture of the electronic component at a nozzle that holds the electronic component and mounts the same to the circuit board is picked up with the use of an image pickup device such as a CCD camera. A suction state, a suction position and the like are recognized on the basis of the picked up-image, and positions of the nozzle and a head having the nozzle are corrected in accordance with recognized information so that the electronic component can be correctly mounted at a mounting position on the circuit board. Components are mounted in this manner (see, for instance, publication of unexamined Japanese patent application No. 60-1900).
For further improving the productivity recently, an idea is conceived that a plurality of nozzles for sucking electronic components are arranged, thereby transferring a plurality of electronic components to a mounting area at a time to mount the same. In picking up images of the components as above in this configuration, while it is necessary to pick up image of the suction state of each of electronic components sucked by the plurality of nozzles, each of the electronic components should be picked up through illumination under an illumination condition conforming to the each electronic component because the electronic components sucked by the nozzles are different in types.
As a method for picking up an image, it is possible to pick up image of the electronic components one by one with the use of one camera and one illumination device, which unfavorably takes a long time. For example, given that 5 nozzles are arranged in an array by a pitch of 10.75 mm to require 10 ms to move by each pitch, and 33 ms is necessary to transfer the obtained image, a total of 205 ms is necessitated.
On the other hand, if image pickup is to be carried out at a time by using a plurality of cameras and preparing a plurality of illumination devices, in the case, e.g., where a nozzle interval is short as in an arrangement by the pitch of 10.75 mm, light from each illumination devices interfere with each other, thereby obstructing normal imaging.
The present invention is developed to solve the problem, and has for its object to provide a component image pickup apparatus for picking up images of hold postures of a plurality of components separately without decreasing a cycle time, a component image pickup method carried out by the component image pickup apparatus, and a component mounting apparatus with the component image pickup apparatus.